The Future of Consumerist

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We understand the temptation — you’re just going to pull up for a minute or two to pick up or return a movie from the Redbox kiosk and the handicap parking spots are right there. It would be so much easier to pull into that spot than find one elsewhere and trek back.

But it’s also illegal and rude and you just shouldn’t do it.

Yet that hasn’t stopped some people (obviously, most Redbox customers are not doing this) all around the country from using the convenient parking spots when they have no legal right to them.

The latest story comes from Parma, OH, where NewsChannel5 reports of area Redbox customers casually using the handicap spots in front of the local CVS.

“They assume that they can just sit in a handicapped spot for a minute or two, and it’s a sense of entitlement. They’re just lazy,” said one area resident who brought the issue to the attention to NewsChannel5. “There are 70 other parking spots here for them to get their movies. It’s not fair to handicapped people at all.”

She says she attempted to confront a woman who had pulled her van into one of these spots and claims the driver’s response was “I don’t care. Nobody cares.”

Parma police spokesman Det. Marty Compton told NewsChannel5 his department takes violation of handicapped parking laws very seriously. Drivers caught parking illegally will be issued at $250 fine and that fine will be doubled if it isn’t paid within 30 days.

The NewsChannel5 hidden camera was only on for about five minutes when a car parked illegally in a handicap spot.

And this is not something new.

Last year, El Paso’s KVIA-TV also only needed five minutes to spot a Redbox customer illegally taking up a parking spot.

And though people who use the handicap spaces may only intend to stay a minute or two, the station saw one customer standing at the kiosk for around 30 minutes while her car was in a handicap spot. When she finally moved her car, it was only because someone from inside the store told her to move.

In Colorado Springs, a reporter for KKTV confronted a woman who was parking in a handicap spot by a Redbox kiosk. Even after admitting that she didn’t have a placard for her car and that she did not need to use the spot, the driver repeatedly just said, “I’m just grabbing this real fast.”

Advocates for those who actually need the spots say they have tried asking the stores to move the kiosks to spots that aren’t as tempting, but the stores invariably say they can do nothing about the location of the machines.

It could be up to Redbox to move the kiosks away from handicap parking, but it’s also possible that the company puts the machines there in order to be convenient for those with disabilities that actually merit the parking spaces.

So maybe it’s on the rest of us to just find proper parking spots and walk the extra 40 feet to get our DVDs. Or just stream the movie online. No parking needed.